What id like in DOW4

Ill preface this by saying that even though some grave errors were made with DoW3 i am a fan of Relic,i have played all the DoW series, am a huge fan of Total War Warhammer, and recently tried CoH2 so i could compare it to DoW3. They can make great games.

So this is my opinion and analysis of the strength and weaknesses of the DoW series and CoH2, the aim being to bring together the best aspects to give the community the game they want.

So let's look at each game

**Dow1 **
Strengths
Base Building
players enjoyed the freedom to create bases wherever they liked on the map. Some players like to play defensively and base building is a huge part of this.

Great Squads and abilities
On the whole the WH40k universe was well represented and the unit abilities were balanced to give a depth of strategic game-play. At the time building a squad instead of individual men was an evolution in the RTS genre. The ability to then customise with upgrades, and use special abilities further enhanced the games playability.

Stealth
Stealth was balanced enough in the original game. The DOW3 implementation seems flawed by comparison. The addition of Stealth Cover is a nice idea, but why does it just look like some twinkling stars, could it not be some dark shadows or crevices??

Weaknesses
Capture Points
These were just circles on the ground you needed to capture, very dull and unimaginative.

Reinforcement.
Whilst it was good to be able to get back your men, this could be done at any time, and required constant clicking to keep men coming. In retrospect this aspect of the game was a first go that was subsequently improved in future titles.

**CoH2 **
Strengths
Capture Points
CoH2 managed to diversify Capture points so the game felt more realistic, adding Stars/ Objectives that had to be controlled to win the game. Fuel Dumps and Ammo Dumps added a little bit of realism and made the capture points more interesting than just a circle on the ground.

Reinforcement.
Only allowing reinforcement near base buildings or certain command centres was a good limitation, and reduced the endless clicking the re-inforce that DOW1 suffered from. I suggest that Barracks and HQ buildings become reinforcement points and maybe some other race specific buildings like Bunkers for Imperial Guard.

I would add Eldar Webways to the list of reinforcement points. Whilst on the subject of webways the DOW3 implementation of them was horrible, they could only cloak for a short time, and establishing a link was unidirectional and seemed to have some time limit of use that just made them frustrating. Webways were one of the main ways of making Eldar tactics work in DOW1.

Furthermore allowing transport vehicles to re-inforce allowed you to push into enemy lines. Rhinos, Falcon grav tanks and other transports often became irrelevant (IMHO) in DOW1 so the reinforce ability gives them a useful new focus.

Destructible Terrain
The way the battlefield changes over the battle was excellent, Tanks crushing through walls was also super fun. I can only imagine how cool this could be in a 40k universe with giant Eliite Units mashing up buildings.
Monetisation

I dont mind paying for content, and COH2 had plenty of options. I would not object to paying

Troop Experience
Another well implemented feature of the game missing from DOW1

Weaknesses
I found the unit cap a little low, apart from that thumps up.

DoW2
Strengths
Campaign Game.
The campaign was fun, unlocking some elite troops as you conquered maps, and the gradual increase in difficulty worked for me. Maybe you can take a little from Total War Warhammer and add an End Game enemy to really challenge players. I just wanted more, more worlds , more races, more maps.

Character Progression.
This had a great campaign where your commander levelled up and found equipment over the course of the game. The Character Progression was great.

For multiplayer it would be great to have a limited amount of leveling up for your Commander.

Fire Arcs and Cover
Similar to CoH2 you had to choose where to face your devastators for them to be effective. This added strategic depth. Heavy weapons should be vulnerable to close assault of flank assaults.

Weaknesses
Base Building
Removing the freedom to choose where to place your structures was the biggest disappointment in this version of the game.

DOW3

The weaknesses are too many to mention so im just going to move to:

Elites
The new elites were great, but they also suffered from issues

On the plus side they had some cool abilities, and it was great to see some truly huge units on the battlefield. The Elite points mechanic added some variety to capture points too. However once you had earned enough elite points to unlock a unit they respawned on a timer, once all your elites were unlocked the Elite point resource was redundant. I suggest paying Elite points every time you need to call on an Elite.

I also think there should be a differentiation between Commanders and Elites.

Each force should have 1 Commander and 2 Elites. Each Player starts off with their Commander, but his equipment and ability upgrades can be improved with Elite Points.

Dare is say it, you could even have a DOTA style equipment menu that allows you to choose gear you normally find in the Campaign game at the cost of resources and Elite points. Using a system similar to Diablo2 commanders, each commander would have slots for Armours, Weapons, Helm, etc.

In the Campaign game elites would be unlocked by capturing certain territories.

Summary
To be honest i think its time to call it a day on DOW3, you are never going to build up enough momentum to give us all the races and updates we want. Give all the DOW3 game owners a free copy of DOW4. Listen to the community, and give us the epic game we want, and no doubt with hods of DLCs and updates Relic can make back the money the needed to invest to re-forge DOW3.

One of the key things in RTS games is combined arms philosophy. You should not be able to win using just one type of unit. If you spam just tanks, you opponent will defeat you with anti tank guns. If you use only infantry, tanks will wipe you. They must be used together. Stealth adds an extra facet to this. Starcraft even managed to add air forces to give an extra element, Im not sure if this would work in WH40k so air support is probably best left to unit abilities!

DOW3 tried to reinvent the wheel and failed, instead take the best game mechanics from the games you have already made and make the game the community want!

Comments

Ill preface this by saying that even though some grave errors were made with DoW3 i am a fan of Relic,i have played all the DoW series, am a huge fan of Total War Warhammer, and recently tried CoH2 so i could compare it to DoW3. They can make great games.

So this is my opinion and analysis of the strength and weaknesses of the DoW series and CoH2, the aim being to bring together the best aspects to give the community the game they want.

So let's look at each game

**Dow1 **
Strengths
Base Building
players enjoyed the freedom to create bases wherever they liked on the map. Some players like to play defensively and base building is a huge part of this.

Great Squads and abilities
On the whole the WH40k universe was well represented and the unit abilities were balanced to give a depth of strategic game-play. At the time building a squad instead of individual men was an evolution in the RTS genre. The ability to then customise with upgrades, and use special abilities further enhanced the games playability.

While true upgrades are important for any RTS i think Relic went overboard with it resulting in certain squads being favored over all the others because they were just better in every aspect.

Stealth
Stealth was balanced enough in the original game. The DOW3 implementation seems flawed by comparison. The addition of Stealth Cover is a nice idea, but why does it just look like some twinkling stars, could it not be some dark shadows or crevices??

Not true at all remember perma cloaked CSM? Tau with their stealth shenanigens and building razing capabilities, and salty eldar players prolonging the game with invisible bases spread throughout the map. Sure there was counterplay to tgese things but they were pretty strong.

You are just nitpicking right now cause you dont like how stealth cover looks in DoW 3. Its a good mechanic and useful.

Weaknesses
Capture Points
These were just circles on the ground you needed to capture, very dull and unimaginative.

Imo there was nothing cooler in DoW 1 than the capturing animations. And you had to cover your squad during capture animation because they didnt shoot back giving some small harrass options.

Reinforcement.
Whilst it was good to be able to get back your men, this could be done at any time, and required constant clicking to keep men coming. In retrospect this aspect of the game was a first go that was subsequently improved in future titles.

Agree

**CoH2 **
Strengths
Capture Points
CoH2 managed to diversify Capture points so the game felt more realistic, adding Stars/ Objectives that had to be controlled to win the game. Fuel Dumps and Ammo Dumps added a little bit of realism and made the capture points more interesting than just a circle on the ground.

Reinforcement.
Only allowing reinforcement near base buildings or certain command centres was a good limitation, and reduced the endless clicking the re-inforce that DOW1 suffered from. I suggest that Barracks and HQ buildings become reinforcement points and maybe some other race specific buildings like Bunkers for Imperial Guard.

I would add Eldar Webways to the list of reinforcement points. Whilst on the subject of webways the DOW3 implementation of them was horrible, they could only cloak for a short time, and establishing a link was unidirectional and seemed to have some time limit of use that just made them frustrating. Webways were one of the main ways of making Eldar tactics work in DOW1.

Furthermore allowing transport vehicles to re-inforce allowed you to push into enemy lines. Rhinos, Falcon grav tanks and other transports often became irrelevant (IMHO) in DOW1 so the reinforce ability gives them a useful new focus.

Destructible Terrain
The way the battlefield changes over the battle was excellent, Tanks crushing through walls was also super fun. I can only imagine how cool this could be in a 40k universe with giant Eliite Units mashing up buildings.

>
This is only really possible in small scale games. Cant do that with games like DoW 3. Sure you could do some destructable terrains with props for tge eye candy factor but not too big.

Monetisation

I dont mind paying for content, and COH2 had plenty of options. I would not object to paying

You might like it but it feels very "pay to win" Thats something everybody complained about in DoW 3s original progression system. People want access to everything.

Troop Experience
Another well implemented feature of the game missing from DOW1

Not well implimented at all. Not for DoW 2 atleast.

Weaknesses
I found the unit cap a little low, apart from that thumps up.

DoW2
Strengths
Campaign Game.
The campaign was fun, unlocking some elite troops as you conquered maps, and the gradual increase in difficulty worked for me. Maybe you can take a little from Total War Warhammer and add an End Game enemy to really challenge players. I just wanted more, more worlds , more races, more maps.

Character Progression.
This had a great campaign where your commander levelled up and found equipment over the course of the game. The Character Progression was great.

For multiplayer it would be great to have a limited amount of leveling up for your Commander.

Can be done but they would have to increase unit health of all units cause if make it for the heros lone units need this. But do we really need it? No.

Fire Arcs and Cover
Similar to CoH2 you had to choose where to face your devastators for them to be effective. This added strategic depth. Heavy weapons should be vulnerable to close assault of flank assaults.

DoW 3 is too fast paced for clunky firing arc mechanics.

Weaknesses
Base Building
Removing the freedom to choose where to place your structures was the biggest disappointment in this version of the game.

DOW3

The weaknesses are too many to mention so im just going to move to:

Elites
The new elites were great, but they also suffered from issues

On the plus side they had some cool abilities, and it was great to see some truly huge units on the battlefield. The Elite points mechanic added some variety to capture points too. However once you had earned enough elite points to unlock a unit they respawned on a timer, once all your elites were unlocked the Elite point resource was redundant. I suggest paying Elite points every time you need to call on an Elite.

I also think there should be a differentiation between Commanders and Elites.

Each force should have 1 Commander and 2 Elites. Each Player starts off with their Commander, but his equipment and ability upgrades can be improved with Elite Points.

Dare is say it, you could even have a DOTA style equipment menu that allows you to choose gear you normally find in the Campaign game at the cost of resources and Elite points. Using a system similar to Diablo2 commanders, each commander would have slots for Armours, Weapons, Helm, etc.

No this is going to heavy in the RPG aspects for a RTS. And would be impossible to balance.

In the Campaign game elites would be unlocked by capturing certain territories.

Summary
To be honest i think its time to call it a day on DOW3, you are never going to build up enough momentum to give us all the races and updates we want. Give all the DOW3 game owners a free copy of DOW4. Listen to the community, and give us the epic game we want, and no doubt with hods of DLCs and updates Relic can make back the money the needed to invest to re-forge DOW3.

WoW..... Really? What drugs are you on?
Relic has been listening to the community and they are continuing their work. You cant speak for the entire community. Just yourself.

One of the key things in RTS games is combined arms philosophy. You should not be able to win using just one type of unit. If you spam just tanks, you opponent will defeat you with anti tank guns. If you use only infantry, tanks will wipe you. They must be used together. Stealth adds an extra facet to this. Starcraft even managed to add air forces to give an extra element, Im not sure if this would work in WH40k so air support is probably best left to unit abilities!

Yeah DoW 3 has alot of combined arms because units are stuck in dedicated combat roles.

DOW3 tried to reinvent the wheel and failed, instead take the best game mechanics from the games you have already made and make the game the community want!

They didnt fail at all. And what is a good or bad game mechanic is debatable. Some mechanics only work in certain ways. Just like many CoH 2 mechanics wouldnt work in DoW 1 or 3

Lol you will not get a free DoW4 bruh. That's not how this works. They pushed out DOW3 to make some return on the prev 6 years of dev time dumped on TWO failed prototypes.

I've always maintained dow3 was a 6/10 game, its competently put together, visually attractive and the gameplay is OK but that's all it is, 6/10 high average score. Fails to impress with unbalanced and unoriginal units and the reintroduction of base building was totally mishandled by having forward bases be a thing for all races, the escalation phase mechanic should be a gigantic red flag for anyone because an introduction of a thing like that is a declaration that the base game is totally wonky.

Relic have never been good at unit balance, I suspect falling on the spectrum of if everything's unbalanced then its all balanced and that's why you see every minor tweak resulting in 1-unit spam armies. First it was assault marines, then it was DA's, then it was scouts, the flavour of the month unit rotating based on a very unpredictable curve because DOW3 is fundamentally unstable like a table with a leg slightly too long, it unbalances the entire game and every minor adjustment causes the thing to tip. There's two ways of solving that problem, measure the legs and cut them to the same length properly (rework basic mechanics, unit build times, reinforcement mechanics, heroes, doctrines, vehicles, armour types and globals) or you can prop up the short legs with some cardboard underneath (the predictable easy method companies use like changing map designs etc to reduce favour from one race to another) or finally you can do what relic did and just tweak the weights on the table surface, every tiny adjustment hopefully bringing balance but more likely causing the whole platform to see-saw all over the place and pissing off literally everyone who will want to move to another table asap.

DOW4 critically needs a stronger vision to build off, this amateur hour b.s. we saw with DOW3 did so much damage to the game. It wasn't backflipping Gabriel, that was silly but 40k is a silly place to start with. It was letting shitters spam a single unit to reach global #1 spots in multiple ladders and then avoiding touching it, as the cultural osmosis causes the idea to filter down to less skilled players some of whom I played against and demolished, things like this killed the game. When the most replied to comments are ones complaining about baby-mode strats winning all engagements you know you have a serious problem.

I warned everyone months ago what this forum would become and would you look at the time, its exactly what I thought it would be. Exactly what SEGA wanted as well, a containment zone that the masses don't go near because seeing an entire years worth of complaints that the game is a broken mess would turn off the few remaining prospective buyers.

I'd even conjecture that offering feedback on dow4 is pointless as well, they know exactly what they did wrong but pitching a dow4 is gonna be real hard to gain traction after the complete shitshow of this game. I'm disappointed too, I love DOW as a series and I even like this game but the more time you spend with it the more problems you see and it kills the enthusiasm by draining your energy.

Thanks @Bigamo
That was pretty interesting. At least this explains what Relic was doing all this time and why development of DOW3 in it's final form started so late. It's heartbreaking to hear all of the hope for this game from the devs. This really struck me. "You're getting four games worth of ideas distilled into one." There's barely enough ideas for one game! I guess all those ideas are just unfinished code.

DOW3 has been an emotional rollercoaster. I don't know whether this game is doomed or if I should keep hope alive. Some more feedback from the devs would sure be nice. Tell me something to give me hope Relic! Give me hope!

Its the future of their game engine too, clearly they moved to another engine over their past COH2 engine. Its a bit like poker once you put money on the table its hard to just write it off. So personally i think they need to put some more money on the table to get their investment back.

Thanks for posting the video! DOW3 definetly seemed half baked, i really dont see where the 4 games worth of ideas are, I only see jealousy of DOTA influencing their design.

As to fewer rooms in the house! OMG so many rooms missing.

Sadly i think they knew the direction they needed to push in - introducing large units, but the rest of the game was tainted by DOTA and the envy of all the money it makes.